The $20 million Clean Charge Network is now 85% complete — 850 of the planned 1,000 charging stations have been installed across the Greater Kansas City region. The project is an initiative of investor-owned Kansas City Power & Light (KCP&L) who has partnered with companies at host locations. The Clean Charge Network represents the largest electric vehicle (EV) charging station installation by an electric utility in the United States. The charging stations used are manufactured by ChargePoint, which has more than 20,000 charging spots in North America and operates the world’s largest EV charging network.
Chuck Caisley, KCP&L’s vice president for marketing and public affairs, estimates there were only around 400-500 EVs in the area when KCP&L began the project in late 2014. The hope is that the new charging network will encourage consumers to embrace the EV, ditching their gasoline powered vehicles for a greener alternative. The completed network will be capable of supporting more than 10,000 EVs.
The charging stations are being built near workplaces, grocery stores, sports stadiums, in apartment garages and in city parking lots and malls (Figure 1). Use of the Clean Charge Network, an example of which is shown in Figure 2, is free until at least the US summer of 2017.
KCP&L services more than 800,000 customers around the Kansas-Missouri border. These customers have already paid for the power grid and associated power plants. This infrastructure, which has been designed to cope with peak loads on the hottest days of the year, is underutilised 80% of the time, according to Caisley.
“People generally charge their cars at non-peak periods when KCP&L’s electrical grid is being underutilised,” said Ashok Gupta, senior energy economist for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “By stimulating electric vehicle adoption with their Clean Charge Network, what KCP&L is doing is encouraging people to use the electrical grid more efficiently and drive down the cost of electricity for everyone.”
If the public embraces the new charging network, KCP&L’s per-unit electricity cost would be lowered. This could potentially offset power price hikes due to costs associated with operating and maintaining the electrical grid.
However, KCP&L reportedly asked utility regulators in Missouri and Kansas for permission to add a 2-3 cent monthly fee to existing customers’ bills to offset some of the installation and maintenance costs of the Clean Charge Network. Missouri regulators have yet to rule but it was a resounding no from Kansas.
“We think KCP&L is certainly free to roll out whatever Clean Car Network program they want,” said David Nickel, consumer counsel with the Kansas Citizens’ Utility Ratepayer Board. “The question becomes whether or not they impose the costs on a captive consumer. Our take on that is, simply not.”
Drivers can search for charging stations and view their availability in real-time at ChargePoint.com or with the free ChargePoint mobile app.
Source/s: Kansas Public Radio, NPR, KCP&L.